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  • Re: Looking for some interesting materials for radiators

    From jack tingle@wjtingle@hotmail.com to rec.arts.sf.science on Thu Nov 18 08:38:22 2021
    From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.science

    On Thursday, January 7, 2021 at 8:36:46 PM UTC-5, salsa.t...@gmail.com wrote:
    Hello, new here and all that jazz. I'm working on a space opera setting and one of the things I'm curious about are the materials that could be used to make a radiator. I have an idea on how warship radiators operate, but I'm trying not to break more rules than I need to.

    Basically, the radiators are flexible and can be rolled up into armored compartments to protect them from hostile fire. When deployed, ribbing in the panels stiffens to keep them from flopping about. Are there any materials that can be rigid in one set of circumstances, but flexible in another? Is this even plausible?
    Try heavy gauge aluminum foil, painted black with something flexible like black paint. An incompressible fluid will pressurize and stiffen them, and a roller will retract them and squeeze out the fluid when you want to stow them. The structure should be tubular perpendicular to the roller. Life will be limited, so make it cheap enough to be recycled into beer cans or whatever.
    There are a number of ways of manufacturing these. The fancy way is to use a complicated rolling procedure to make them from a pair of sheets of aluminum, with complicated bonding, rolling, and surface treatments internally and then hydraulically expanded. Or you could just resistance weld foil into the final shape you want. In either case, a spray can of black paint is the final item.
    Good luck,
    Jack Tingle
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